This proposal before the Ohio House would cost taxpayers and deny needy families resources they need to survive.

A Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill that would subject Ohio Medicaid recipients to random drug tests in order to receive benefits from the state-subsidized health program.

[…]

Gary Daniels, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, doesn’t see Balderson’s legislation going anywhere. “I have a hard time taking it seriously as an actual proposal,” he said.

Daniels called the proposed law unconstitutional. He cited a case from about a decade ago, Marchwinski v. Howard, in which a Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a previous ruling that struck down a Michigan law that tied public assistance to drug testing.

Daniels said the approach Balderson calls for has been been proposed many times in the past by states but is too “costly and ineffective” to work. He noted that the bill doesn’t mention how the state would pay for the drug-testing program. He speculated that Balderson introduced the bill to appear “tough on crime.”

Invasive and possibly ineffective body scanners will be implemented soon in Columbus and several other airports around the country.

If you plan to fly from Port Columbus when the weather warms up, there’s a good chance you’ll have to step into a full-body scanner first.

The airport expects to receive at least two full-body scanners by late spring or early summer to enhance its security screenings.

Airport officials are awaiting final confirmation and further details from the Transportation Security Administration, which will pay for and operate the scanners. Columbus had been put on a list by the TSA last year to receive the full-body scanners, said Rod Borden, chief operating officer of the Columbus Regional Airport Authority.

TSA spokesman Jon Allen said the 150 body scanners the TSA has already secured are manufactured by Rapiscan and cost $160,000 apiece. They will be distributed across the country in coming months.

The ABJ praises the Ohio Supreme Court over their recent ruling requiring police to obtain a warrant before they search someone’s cell phone.

Justice Judith Lanzinger put the challenge in four words: ”Cell phones defy categorization.” Yet the courts must plunge into the task, anyway, seeking to draw clear distinctions and critical boundaries involving police searches and seizures in criminal investigations. On Tuesday, Lanzinger, writing for a 4-3 majority of the Ohio Supreme Court, delivered a careful argument, and the majority landed where it belonged. It upheld the Fourth Amendment principle protecting an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

The decision stemmed from a drug case. A woman taken to the hospital after a drug overdose agreed during questioning by police officers to call her drug dealer. Police officers soon arrested the dealer, and in doing so, confiscated his cell phone, eventually recovering call records and phone numbers. A jury convicted the dealer for trafficking in cocaine and other charges. He received 12 years in prison.

The defendant appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial court erred in failing to suppress the evidence found on the cell phone. The court of appeals upheld the conviction. A 2-1 majority sided with the trial court, reaffirming the view that a cell phone is essentially a closed container and thus subject to search during a lawful arrest.

The Ohio Supreme Court issued a wonderful ruling yesterday affirming that police officers must have a warrant before they search a person’s cell phone.

Police can’t examine the contents of a suspect’s cell phone without a warrant, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a first-of-its-kind case over privacy and technology.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Smith’s position, contends that as cell phones become more like personal computers, the data they hold should be protected from unreasonable intrusions.

“There is so much information that we keep in our cell phones,” ACLU of Ohio lawyer Carrie Davis said yesterday. “It is not a simple telephone. Because of that, people have an expectation that the information they keep will be private.”

Lanzinger’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer and Justices Paul E. Pfeifer and Maureen O’Connor.

Troubling reports of Columbus police officers randomly searching public buses raise questions over whether individuals are are to decline a search and how the police choose who is searched.

The Central Ohio Transit Authority is now using police dogs to increase security, 10TV’s Angela An reported Wednesday.

While assaults against passengers and drivers are down compared to last year, police made 35 percent more arrests this year on buses and bus stops. There have been 158 arrests to date in 2009, An reported.

“The reason we started with bomb dogs is to make sure people aren’t bringing suspicious packages on the buses and leaving them behind,” said COTA’s security director Stan Alverson.

The dogs are joining undercover officers in searching for anything illegal, from explosives to drugs.

This week the Ohio Supreme Court heard a case challenging whether police have a right to search through a person’s cell phone without a court order.

Police may be able to take cell phones from people they arrest, but that doesn’t give them the right to scroll through call logs in search of incriminating information without a warrant, a defense attorney told the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday.

[…]

The case has attracted interest from outside groups. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief on behalf of Smith, while the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association filed a brief in favor of police and prosecutors.

The court is expected to rule in several months.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court categorically forbidding schools from doing so, a school in Iowa strip searched a group of students because a sum of money went missing.

School’s in! September’s here; pencils are sharpened, apples are polished, and — in one Iowa town where administrators’ summer reading list clearly did not include Safford Unified School Dist. #1 v. Redding — female students are strip-searched on suspicion of theft.

The Des Moines Register reported over the weekend that on Aug. 21, the third day of school, a student at Atlantic High reported $100 missing from her purse. Five girls who were somehow deemed persons of interest in the case were asked to strip in front of a female counselor and their accuser (!?). (No boys were involved because apparently none were around when the theft was believed to have occurred.) Lawyers (yuh!) for the girls’ families told the Register that (paraphrase) each girl stripped in varying degrees. One 15-year-old “was asked to remove all of her clothing including her undergarments.” Another asked if she could lift up her bra and was told that wasn’t good enough. One was searched twice. At least two were permitted not to remove their underwear because it was more revealing than the others’ and therefore an unlikely hiding place. [End of repellent soft-core juvie prison scene]

Students, have you been strip-searched at school? Tell us about it.

The editorial board of the Lima News applauds the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Savana Redding.

It is encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court so strongly condemned the decision by officials in an Arizona school district to strip-search a 13-year-old girl because they suspected she might have Ibuprofen in her undergarments. The amazing thing is that one justice (Clarence Thomas) dissented, and that the court was not more forceful in condemning the drug-law-induced hysteria that made searching a child for a common pain medication even thinkable.

Savana Redding was 13 in 2003 when, in response to a tip from another girl (in trouble for bringing drugs to school) school officials in Safford, Ariz., conducted a strip search to see if she had any Ibuprofen. They found nothing. Savana’s mother sued, and after losing at trial court, won at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the school district and assistant principal potentially liable for damages.

The Supreme Court agreed, 8-1, that the search was unreasonable, affirming that children do not give up all their rights when they are in a government school. It didn’t find the vice principal personally liable (two justices in the majority disagreed with this) and asked a lower court to decide if the school district should be held liable.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday affirming that schools may not strip search students.

In a decision that could affect a case from Pike County, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that school officials cannot strip-search students unless the safety of students is at stake.

In an 8-1 ruling involving a case from Arizona, the justices concluded that a strip search of a 13-year-old girl suspected of having a legal painkiller violated the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizures.

[…]

“Now, everyone is affirmatively on notice,” said Carrie Davis, an attorney with the Ohio office of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It would be next to impossible for a school official to claim qualified immunity from litigation under the same set of circumstances after today’s ruling.”

The Vindicator weighs the consequences of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that protects drivers from having their vehicles searched illegally.

Youngstown police and the Ohio State Highway Patrol are once again joined in an effort aimed at making the city a better place to live by pursuing a zero tolerance policy for traffic violations.

And along the way, Police Chief Jimmy Hughes hopes to nab more than bad drivers, he’s looking for bad guys of all stripes.

“We hope to stop the cars for the violations and search for evidence of any other wrongdoing,” Hughes said.

Police and the patrol pursued a similar strategy last year and it met with some success.

But it may be a little tougher this year.

There’s been a notable change in what the Supreme Court of the United States views as a legitimate search of a motor vehicle following a routine traffic stop.

ACLU of Ohio Staff Counsel Carrie Davis discusses a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that expands Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.

For nearly three decades, Ohio police officers could routinely rummage through vehicles in search of contraband and evidence after arrests.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that residents’ rights were being violated by unjustified police searches unconnected to concerns about safety or preserving evidence.

The court’s landmark 1981 ruling on vehicle searches had been “stretched beyond reason,” said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Ohio. “The searches had gotten well beyond what the Fourth Amendment allows.”

OSU senior Magan Strub pens a great article on the Redding case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which will test whether school administrators may conduct strip searches.

When school officials have to strip-search 13-year-olds for prescription Ibuprofen, something very wrong has happened to our educational system.

I’m not talking about curriculum or the deplorable state of public-school funding, or whether charter schools are worth it - I’m talking about the essential trust between students and school officials that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years.

Savana Redding was strip-searched without the knowledge or consent of her parents by an untrained school official. She was not searched for hard drugs or weapons, or because of any hard evidence of contraband.

The Dispatch discusses a crucial students’ rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court this term and its local implications.

The U.S. Supreme Court wrestled yesterday with questions of when it is appropriate for school officials to strip-search students. The case could have bearing on at least one similar Ohio lawsuit.

[…]

Gary Daniels, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, said it’s worrisome that the high court decided to hear the case.

“The 9th Circuit Court struck it down as unconstitutional,” Daniels said. He added that if the Supreme Court was to rule in a way that allowed for more strip-searching of students, it could make future litigation more difficult.

The ACLU reached a settlement with the Bucyrus school district this month over the search of five middle-school students suspected of having cigarettes. The five students were awarded a total of $24,000, and the district was instructed to redraft its policies on searches and conduct staff training.

The ACLU was victorious in its lawsuit against Bucyrus City Schools for strip searching several middle school students.

Bucyrus City School District parent Christy Shaffer is relieved a lawsuit over a strip search has been settled against the district.

“I am happy that the district will be adopting a new policy regarding strip searches that will be in accordance with Ohio laws,” Shaffer said. “The school agreed to the policy change, and will be retraining staff members to enforce the rules appropriately.”

[…]

“We are gratified to have resolved the case and to have achieved a change in policy and compensation for our clients. It is our hope and expectation that strip searches in the Bucyrus schools will be a thing of the past,” said Carrie Davis of the Ohio ACLU’s Cleveland office.